


that one last tender place

by murakamism



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Rey (Star Wars), Dark Reylo, F/M, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 21:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20477900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murakamism/pseuds/murakamism
Summary: It’s something she learned long, long ago. You can’t gain anything of value without first staining your hands. The path to power is only laced with pain. The Dark Side is better traveled alone.





	that one last tender place

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a Dark Rey x Dark Kylo fanfic in early 2018 but never finished it. The TROS teaser, however, forced me to revisit the idea.
> 
> _Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in?_ Title is from Richard Siken's poem [Wishbone](https://fingerprintsonglass.wordpress.com/tag/richard-siken/).

Nights on Jakku are never truly dark, not when the desert dunes are illuminated by a canopy of starlight. As a little girl she would lie on her back, tracing shapes in the sky, repeating the stories she’d read about in holobooks. She’d whisper them to herself, each myth and line, on and on until her lamp cooled into embers and her eyes fell shut.

The desert is never truly dark. But today the stars are invisible, their light swallowed by great pillars of flame.

The village burns to the ground, taking every lifeform with it.

She feels like a phoenix—a creature reborn in fire. No longer Rey of Jakku, only Kira Ren.

Her eyes burn crimson, just as red as the sabers in her palms.

It’s something she learned long, long ago. You can’t gain anything of value without first staining your hands. The path to power is only laced with pain.

But for once, it doesn’t have to be just her own.

“A weak soldier is a dead soldier,” says Snoke. He leers over her, larger than life, flickering blue and white in the stale air. Even when he isn’t physically here she can feel his darkness bleeding into her, pressing against her skull, forcing an entrance. She grits her teeth and does not fight back, not in the way he’d hate. “Are you weak, Kira Ren?”

“No,” she spits, getting back on her feet. The world spins. Her face is hot and sticky, and when she wipes away the wetness on her cheek, her glove comes back red. “I am not weak.”

Snoke doesn’t reply. He only sends a battalion straight at her, an explosion of blasterfire and Force lightning and red hot heat.

Kira defeats them all, not because she is a victor, but because she is a survivor.

And survivors don’t have a choice.

The first time she meets him, she is keenly aware of the power that thrums beneath his skin. His voice, deep and modulated, resembles an animal growl. For a moment she wonders what kind of beast this helmet hides. Kylo Ren can’t be human. He must be ugly, horrifically scarred, or otherwise disfigured like the way Snoke is. That kind of power is never without sacrifice, she knows.

He is a master of the battlefield. His body is a beacon of the Force—a wild, beautiful thing, so full of power and rage. But where she is grace, he is brutality. It makes no difference to him, whether one murders with a snap of the fingers or a full palm wrapped around someone else’s neck.

And unlike Hux, unlike the other First Order officers, unlike Snoke’s other underlings—he does not deny the filth on his hands. It weighs down on him, each sin, like a noose slowly constricting his neck.

_Heartful fool_, she thinks. _We have no use for sentiment._

Or maybe she’s just jealous that he still has a past to mourn.

Kira has spent her entire life up to this point alone, so she doesn’t expect it to change any time soon. Everyone is already afraid of her and her power. She smells the stench of their fear and hatred as she roams the halls of the Finalizer, as she sleeps in her bed, as she fights alongside them from planet to planet. Sure, there’s some admiration there too, but it’s the same admiration one feels for an atomic bomb or a black hole—marveling at the capacity for destruction, not life.

Besides, the path to the Dark Side is better traveled alone.

She eats alone. She sleeps alone. She fights alone, really, even when she’s surrounded by an army of Stormtroopers.

It’s not as if any of them makes a difference to her work.

It’s not as if any of them matter.

They aren’t usually deployed to the same area, because that would be overkill. If Kylo and Kira Ren can raze entire planets to the ground on their own, then pairing them up would only mean self-destruction. She doesn’t see him again for the longest time, not unless she counts glimpses during meetings with Supreme Leader Snoke.

Always, always, him with his head bowed, him with his fists clenched, him with his helmet on.

Of course she’s heard of his tantrums. Who hasn’t? She’s even watched it once—she only sneered in disgust; it was such a waste of resources. But she’s never had a reason to talk to him, never had a reason to interfere.

So of course it’s him that interferes first.

She’s in the training room, sparring with a dozen training holograms. As she dodges a rebel’s blasterfire, she hears the door swoosh open. Kira slices off the rebel’s head and then throws one lightsaber behind her, hearing the way it spins in the air, slicing wind and heat.

And then it stops, halted in mid-air as she shuts off the training program.

Kylo Ren stands by the doorway, a single palm raised. The point of her glowing lightsaber hovers in the air, just inches away from his nose.

His nose. No helmet today. Her breath hitches inside of her throat. Such dark eyes he has. Such dark hair. Such pale skin.

_He’s beautiful in a way she had forgotten could even exist._

But then she snaps out of it, and within seconds she’s called the saber back to her palms. She stands her ground, a brow raised and hip cocked to the side.

“What do you want?” she asks. He shrugs one shoulder.

“We should spar together,” he replies.

“I don’t need to spar with you.”

“Of course you do. You’ve never fought an equal before.”

She raises another brow, shocked at the audacity, at the arrogance. She huffs and ignites her blades again.

“Equal?” she asks, her voice loud and echoing. He’s right, he’s right, she knows it in her bones. But her ego won’t let her admit it. Not when Supreme Leader Snoke had looked at her this morning with something almost like... pride. “We’ll see about that, Kylo Ren.”

He doesn’t quite smile at her. He only ignites his lightsaber. It crackles to life, red and angry and so horrifically cruel.

She’s on him in a flash.

He parries at once, those powerful arms blowing her backwards. She skids to a stop and throws a palm up, hoping to hit him with the Force. He counters with his own attack and the breath is knocked right out of her lungs.

She almost blacks out.

She’s never felt more alive.

They go on sparring in a cruel dance, neither one giving more than an inch. Two steps forward, two steps back. Two equals aiming to kill. Neither one budging.

She never does admit that he was right, that they are equals. But she doesn’t have to. He already knows what she thinks.

So it becomes a routine. They spar, and spar, and spar.

When the rest of the galaxy shies away from their black-matter darkness, from their constellation of crimson light, they spar.

Only darkness can devour darkness.

And only light can blind light.

There’s no reason to talk about their lives from before. Ben Solo is dead, and so is Rey of Jakku. Their bodies are mere husks. Their souls are tainted. There is nothing left of who they used to be.

There shouldn’t be.

They are soldiers. They are Darksiders. They are Sith.

They are Kylo and Kira Ren.

They have no room for tenderness.

And yet sometimes when she sees Kylo without his mask, she thinks that he’s only a scared little boy, only a monster who is desperate for what he cannot have—control, true power, love.

It’s disgusting.

It’s disgusting because she wants the same. Because she thought she had murdered Rey long, long ago. She thought she had burned that little girl-child to the ground along with that village in Jakku. And yet remnants of her cling to Kira’s skin. It’s the way her heart flips traitorously—in hope, no less—when Snoke decides not to punish her. It’s the way she looks forward to sparring with Kylo every week. It’s the way she lets him weaken his blows, the way she decides to ignore his openings, the way she trains her eyes on his throat and decides not to rip it open with her blade.

They have no room for mercy. This must be something else.

She has a vision of herself shoving him to the ground, yanking off his belt, and mounting him or maybe letting him mount her. Her entire body burns with the idea. She trembles violently as hundreds of images flash through her head: the hint of skin against skin, the heat of a breath, the wetness of a tongue, the throbbing between her legs. And when she sees one image brighter than the rest—an innocent one, just the press of his fingertips against hers—her heart lurches wildly, even fuller with desire.

Desire. _Desire_. Lust. Greed. Physical, visceral, violent. She must want him the way she wants everything else. The way she wants water and food. The way she wants vengeance and blood. The way she wants victory. The way she wants power and strength and air.

Her body is an instrument of the Force. She wonders how well he’d play her strings with such large, careful hands.

Fucking is just fucking. It doesn’t have to mean—

Love—

Anything.

The next time she sees him again, she considers asking him to come to bed with her. Considers smashing their mouths together for one fierce kiss.

Instead, she ignites her saber, because she is suddenly, sickeningly afraid.

And she can calm her heart in the only way she knows how: through denying that it exists.

When Kylo asks why her hands are trembling, she tells him that she’s tired from that day’s mission, so he refuses to strike more and tells her to rest instead. She hates him for it.

Whenever she hurts, only he can see.

It’s the only time she doesn’t feel alone.

“Every day,” Snoke says, staring right into her eyes. “You grow stronger and stronger within the Dark Side of the Force. I feel it, Kira. You have something inside of you that nobody else has.”

She swallows thickly and ducks her head. All her life, she’d been waiting for this. All her second-life, she’s been training for this. True power, true strength. True belonging.

She wants to deserve this new name. She wants there to be a point to all the blood on her hands.

“But you mustn’t grow complacent,” Snoke adds. He growls. “Power is a volatile, fragile thing. It can be easily taken away from those who aren’t worthy. From those that don’t want it _enough. _Do you want to be the best, Kira?”

“I do.”

“Then you have to prove it to me one last time.”

She whips her head upwards. “How can I prove it, Supreme Leader?”

“You must destroy everything that stands in your way.” He grips the sides of his golden throne. “You must know that the path to the Dark Side is a solitary one paved in blood... but the rewards far outweigh its costs.”

She nods, unsure of what he’s about to say next.

“You’re so close to being the most powerful Force user in the galaxy, Kira Ren. There is only one other man who stands in your way. Kill him and prove to me that you need no equal.”

Her eyes widen.

“Kill Kylo Ren, my other apprentice,” Snoke finishes. “And prove that you are truly my daughter of darkness—that you are a victor, a queen.”

Kira has spent her entire life up to this point alone, so she doesn’t expect it to change any time soon. Other lifeforms are always just a means to an end. Other lifeforms are only just distractions from her destiny.

The path to the Dark Side is laced with pain—but it doesn’t have to be her own.

Why then does her chest hurt like it’s been stabbed by a million spears?

She finds him on the battlefield. He is one singular point of blackness—a giant wellspring of strength in the Force calling out to her, drawn to her own beacon. Above them are collections of galaxies and stars: other lifeforms, other lifetimes, other possibilities that they could never have.

It’s a fitting end, she thinks. Just the two of them. Two equals, two fighters, two children hiding behind false names. One shall fall and one shall rise.

All this power humming beneath them, and yet when they die, they won’t be missed.

Kylo wears his helmet, though it doesn’t matter. She can _feel _him. She can practically see the way his dark eyes burn against her own. She can read the breaths on his lips. When she raises her lightsabers against him, it’s familiar. They’ve done this so many other times before.

But today will be the last.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” he says. It isn’t a question. Kira nods, her jaw tight.

He nods back, grateful for her honesty.

“I know what Snoke told you,” he adds, igniting his saber. It roars to life, illuminating his mask with a jagged scar of crimson. “He told me the same thing.”

This time, when her heart shatters, she’s ready for it.

He’s the one that charges first.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a little girl who dreamed that her parents would come back for her. That someone would love her. That she would be good enough. That she would be strong and worthy of her name.

That she wouldn’t be that same weak, scared little girl anymore.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a little boy who dreamed that his parents would look at him and really _see _him. That someone would love him. That he would be good enough. That he would be strong and worthy of his name.

That he wouldn’t be that same weak, scared little boy anymore.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, two equals stood on a battlefield and raised their swords to each other’s throats. Only one could make it out alive.

Their master was only cackling from his golden throne.

Kylo is on his knees. His throat is pale and bare. Kira has a fistful of his hair in her hands. She yanks his head upwards so he can stare at her with those brilliant, shining eyes. So she will be the last thing he’ll see as he dies.

_He’s grateful for it._

His helmet is a pile of ash and debris on the dusty ground.

Kira’s hand flexes.

She squeezes.

Half a galaxy away, Supreme Leader Snoke wheezes his final breath. There is a blade inside of his gut.

For the first time in a very long time, Kira Ren smiles. Kylo Ren doesn’t. He just looks at her, his eyes wide with reverence, his chest full with an emotion he can no longer deny. A noise bubbles out of her lips—high-pitched and warbling, unfamiliar and beautiful. Kira’s body shakes with the effort. She falls to her knees, mimicking Kylo’s pose. He doesn’t dare reach out to her, not yet.

She realizes she’s laughing. And then he does too—lets his lips curve into a smile.

Their sabers shut off, plunging them into the darkness of the night. No, never truly darkness, not when they’re shielded by a blanket of stars.

Kira loves him, not because she is lonely, but because she is alive.

And when you are alive, you have to make a choice.


End file.
